'Yes sir/ said Inex. As he turned to go, I reached out and touched him briefly on the forehead. He shuddered. My psi-imprint would stay with him for a good thirty minutes now, even once he was out of my vicinity.
Inex ran off.
I looked at the car door. It had been pulled to, but the 'unsecure' light was still blinking. There were thawing cakes of dirty ice on the metal deck inside the door.
'How many people went out?' I asked.
One of them checked the display. Twenty, sir/
'How many have come back inside since you got here?'
'None/ they all said.
They would be looking for me. For us. They knew we were on the train, and they'd got someone aboard at Fonette or Locastre. Someone who had befriended Rebert Awins, killed him and taken his pass keys. Someone with the technical expertise to trigger a partial brake lock, stop the train and then use Awin's keys to open an exterior door and let his associates aboard.
Someone who, by now, surely knew which cabins we were occupying.
I ran back down the train towards car three, using the lower deck hallways. I slid Barbarisater from its nedskin scabbard. It seemed so incongruous to be hurrying down a train's companionway brandishing a sword. But the cabins around me were full of innocent Imperial citizens and I didn't dare use my pistol.
I also didn't dare use the intercom.
I reached out psychically. Eleena was an untouchable blank, so I called to Aemos, Crezia and Medea.
Be ready. Trouble coming.
I passed several train staff in the hall as I made my way past and they jumped back in alarm as they saw the blade.
Forget! I willed at each one as 1 passed, and they just went on their way.
I reached the front end of car four and prepared to go up. A Trans-Continental steward lay face down on the stairs, his neck snapped.
Just then, the frantic voice of Inex wailed into my earpiece. 'He's dead! Oh God-Emperor! He's dead! Rebert's dead! Sound the alarm!'
The distress klaxon started to warble and recessed light plates in the wall began to blink orange. I saw a third red light had lit up on the car-end monitor panel.
I jammed my signet ring against the reader and cued information.
Alert code 946 decimal 2452 - irregular breach of window seal, window 146, car three, upper.
I clambered over the steward's corpse and made my way up the stairs.
The upper hallway of car three was even colder than the chill of car eight. The end window on the port side, beside the intercarriage articulation, was wide open and freezing air and snow was whirling in. The window had been cut out of its frame with a powerblade or melta torch.
The light was bad. Gloomy, half-dimmed lamps aggravated by the fretful blink of the alarm lights. The klaxons still whooped.
I realised there were three dark shapes halfway down the hall ahead of me, skulking low. They hadn't heard me arrive over the howl of the blizzard and the shrill of the alarms.
I hugged the panelled wall. Barbarisater throbbed, hungry. Even passively, I could sense the three men were psi-shielded. They made big silhouettes. Combat armour. I saw the ugly shadow of an assault weapon as the point man waved his partners forward.
Forward towards the doors of our compartments.
I edged closer.
The point man, oozing professionalism as he visually checked his rear, saw me.
And all hell broke loose.
FOURTEEN
Barbarisater versus the janissaries.
Etrik, blade to blade. Lunchtime drinks in New Gevae.
The two killers nearest me turned and opened fire with blunt, large calibre autoguns. I suppose the sword in my hand was a damn give away, but they'd have killed me anyway, even if they had mistaken me for a wayward bystander.
They were professional killers, Vessorine janissaries. They had a job to do, a contract to fulfill, and anyone in their way was a target.
The fact that they were using solid-round weapons confirmed they were Vessorine. The ultimate military pragmatists. They'd tailed the train in a poorly-insulated speeder and deployed through a blizzard. In those conditions, standard las-weapons might have died, their cell-power drained by the cold. But a well-lubricated autogun would fire below freezing. It had only to rely on its percussive hammer action.
Vessorine janissaries. I had faced them before without knowing what they were. Now I knew, and their formidable reputation almost gave me pause. Vessorines, three of them. Plated in combat armour and firing heavyweight man-stopper ammunition. Frankly, I'd rather have squared off with angry Kasrkin.
But Barbarisater was in my hand, alert and alive. I had been using my will openly for some time, and that had quickened its strength. I made a ghan fasl, the figure-eight stroke and smashed the first three shots away, impact sparks sheeting from the energised sword blade. Then I struck an
uwe sax, an ulsar and a ura wyla bei in rapid series, deflecting squashed rounds into the panelling around me. Wood splintered.
I dived sideways as further shots punched into the hallway carpet and exploded on the inter-wagon doors. People were screaming in the cabins all around.
I rolled and came up on my feet as the first Vessorine rounded the car-end corner and fired half a dozen times. His ejecting shell-cases pattered off his torso in a fog of blue smoke and his gun muzzle lit up like a blowtorch. Point blank.
Except I was behind him.
His gunfire shredded the wagon wall and ruptured the window frame. Barbarisater removed his head.
The second one was charging and firing too. He let out a mask-muffled bellow as he saw his comrade collapse in pieces.
I threw an ura geh sequence that diverted the white blurs of his bullets, then followed in with a uin tahn wyla that chopped the barrel off his weapon, a reverse tahn stroke that severed his forearms, and then the ewl caer. The death stroke.
Hot red blood was already spurting from his arm stumps and steaming in the freezing air as Barbarisater plunged through his ceramite chest armour and burst his heart. The gunshot walls were painted with instantly frozen dribbles of bloody ice.
A bullet creased the corner of my jaw with enough force to rip open the flesh of my chin and knock me to the carpet. I tried to rise, but the third Vessorine was right over me. I heard his weapon rack.
He screamed. I smelled a burning in the cold air.
I looked up.
The Vessorine was trying to shield himself, as if from a swarm of stinging insects. Crezia's cyber skulls were flitting around him, stabbing repeatedly with their surgical lasers.
His yelps were cut off by the double crack of a las-weapon.
The janissary collapsed like a deadweight at my feet.
I looked down the hall and saw Eleena Koi in the doorway of my room, holding her pistol in a defiant two-handed grip.
'Eleena!' I yelled. 'Get the others out of the compartment! Get mem out into the hall and move them this way!'
'But Medea-' she began.
'Do it!'
I ran to the cut-out car window and hauled myself out into the vicious chill. I had to sheath Barbarisater and it didn't like it. Outside, it was bone-achingly cold and the blizzard pummelled me with hail hard as stones. There was precious little in the way of handholds and the exterior of the car was iced up.
I found something to cling to... solid runnels of ice, I think. My fingers went numb.
I hauled myself up onto the roof of car three, the vast snow-peppered blackness of the Atenate night above me.
The blizzard ensured I couldn't see far. I could barely stand up. The convex aluminium roof of the wagon was iced smooth as a skating rink.
A few steps along and my legs went out. I fell smack on my front, dazed and winded. Blood filled my mouth; I had bitten my tongue.
Spitting blood and made angry by the pain, I dragged myself forward through the elemental deluge. I saw shapes ahead of me in the white-on-black maelstrom. Three more armoured figures on the edge of the roof.
r /> They had lowered a directional detonator onto the window of the cabin I had shared with Aemos. As 1 watched, they triggered it and blasted the window inwards in a hail of glass and fire. The first janissary began to rope down to swing in through the blown window. His comrades were hunched on the rooftop, anchoring his lines.
I leapt up and Barbarisater flew out, crackling in the wet air.
The augmented Carthean warblade came down, splitting the lines in two and cutting deeply into the wagon roof. The descending killer shrieked as he fell away down the side of the two storey carriage.
The other two jerked round like lightning, one going for his sidearm, the other leaping at me with clawing hands. A tahn wyla met him and bisected his head like a ripe gummice fruit.
The corpse rolled off the car top into the darkness. I stood ready, Barbarisater twitching in my hands. The remaining Vessorine backed away, aiming a large calibre autopistol at me. The two of us could barely stand, such was the blizzard's windshear.
He fired once. An ulsar flicked the round away. He fired again, his feet slipping, and I made an uin ulsar that spat the bullet off into the darkness.
'My name is Gregor Eisenhorn. I am the man you have been paid to kill. Identify yourself.'
He hesitated. 'My nomclat be Etrik, badge of Clansire. Clan Szober.'
'Clansire Etrik. I've heard so much about you.' I had to raise my voice over the storm. Vammeko Tarl mentioned your name.'
Tarl? He be-'
The one who let you aboard?' I finished for him. 'I thought so. I had a feeling he'd been tailing me.'
'Be it he you just slew.'
'Is that so? Tough. Give yourself up.'
'I will not.'
'Uh huh. Tell me this, then... how much is Pontius paying your clan for this work?'
4Vho be Pontius?'
'Khanjar, then. Khanjar the Sharp.'
'Enough.'
He fired again and then lunged at me, swinging a power sword up in his left hand. Barbarisater knocked the whizzing slug away and then formed an uwe sar to block the downswing of the glittering blade. There was a bark of clashing energies.
I switched to a double-handed grip and ripped Barbarisater in a crosswise stroke as Etrik tried to use his pistol again. The tip of the blade cut through the gun's body and left him with only a handgrip. But the Clan-sire's sword, a short yet robust falchion of antique design, darted in and sliced through the meat of my right shoulder. I howled.
I snarled into a leht suf that rebounded his thrust and swung reversing ulsars that parried two more fast cuts and put me on the front foot. Etrik was a big man, with a considerable reach and alarming strength. That meant even his most nimble and extended strikes were delivered with punishing force. I did not recognise the blade technique he was using, although I was aware that the warriors of Vessor considered sword skill one of the three primary battle arts, devoting as much time to it during their training as to gun lore and open hand. The very fact he was the owner of an heirloom power weapon identified him as an expert.
My skills were a heterodox blend of methods that I had mastered over the years, but at the core of them was the Ewl Wyla Scryi or 'the genius of sharpness', the ancient Carthean swordmastery system.
On top of the Trans-Atenate Express, any blade methods had to be semi-improvised. Neither of us were steady on our feet, our boots sliding on the iced metal, and the gale dragged at us hard.
He kept attacking high, aiming for the throat, I imagine, and I was driven into a variety of tahn feh sar parries with a tightly vertical blade that defend the head and ear. My own attacks were lower, fon uls and fon uin strokes that targeted the heart, belly and swordarm.
His defence was excellent, especially a sliding backdrag that fouled every fon bei I struck in an attempt to push his blade down laterally and open his guard. His attack strokes were inventively arrhythmic, preventing all but the most last moment anticipations. He was hideously skilful.
I wondered if that was why Pontius Glaw had hired these Vessorines. He was such a connoisseur of martial skills and warrior breeds. He didn't just want killers. He wanted masters of the killing art.
In Clansire Etrik, he'd got his money's worth.
I realised that the mercenary, with a combination of cross parries and driving thrust strokes, was pressing me back towards the gap between carriages three and four. I was cornered with my back to the drop, my combat options restricted. I didn't dare risk a backwards jump without looking, and I couldn't take my eyes off his sword for a moment. I knew he would be building up to a sharp frontal attack that would either catch me with no room to dodge or topple me off the edge.
Carthean sword-craft teaches that when an imminent attack is unavoidable, the only practical response is to limit or force it. The technique, which has many forms, is called the gej kul asf, which means 'the bridled steed'. It imagines the adversary is an unbroken mount who is going to charge no matter what you do, and that your blade is a long-reined bridle that will control that charge on your terms. Etrik was going to lunge, so I needed to reduce the lunging options. I went into an ehn kulsar, where the
sword is raised, two-handed, with the hilt above shoulder height and the blade tipped down in a thirty-five degree angle from the horizontal. Sharp, lateral blade turns robbed him of any sideways or upper body opportunities. His only option was to come in low, parrying up, to get in underneath my guard. I was forcing him to target my lower body, an area his sword-play had shown he didn't favour. It also required him to extend in a low, ill-balanced way.
Etrik made the lunge, shoulder down and sword rising from a hip-height grip. My 'bridle' entirely determined the height and direction of the thrust.
Instead of backing or attempting to knock his rising blade aside with a diagonal stroke, I sidestepped, like a bull-dancer evading a head-down aurox in the karnivale pits of Mankareal. Now he was running his sword into empty space.
He tried to pull in, but he'd committed his weight behind it. His left foot kicked out on the roof ice and his right one went skidding sideways. Etrik grunted out a curse and did the only thing he could. He turned his lunge into a leap.
He just made the roof of the next wagon, his chest and arms slamming into it, his legs wheeling over the drop. His falchion had a pommel spike and he slammed it down into the roof to anchor himself, his boots trying to get a grip on the weatherproof plastic sides of the intercarriage articulation.
I had seconds to turn my temporary advantage into a permanent upper hand.
But my hasty sidestep had left me with no more purchase on the iced roof than Etrik. My legs suddenly flew out from under me and I crashed down on my back. I rolled as fast as I could and fumbled for a handhold, but it cost me Barbarisater. The precious sword squealed as it tumbled over the edge of the roof.
I was holding on, barely. Etrik's pommel spike shrieked across the roof metal as he put his weight onto it and dug in. With a few scrabbling kicks, he hoisted himself up onto the roof of car four and looked back at me. He chuckled an ugly jeer as he saw me worse off than he was.
Still chuckling, he gingerly took one step out onto the top of the intercarriage articulation, and then another, balancing as he crossed back to car three to finish me off.
Another two steps, and he would be within stabbing range.
I decided which of my handholds was most secure and let go with the other, fumbling round behind myself.
Etrik came off the articulation, took the last step, his sword raised to rip at me, and found himself looking down the barrel of my autopistol.
It was contrary to all the noble rules of the Ewl Wyla Scryi to start a sword duel and finish it with a gun. The Carthean masters would have been ashamed of me. But I wasn't feeling particularly noble by then.
I fired just once. The shot hit him in the sternum and slammed him backwards. With a cheated look on his face, Etrik disappeared off the far side of the roof.
I was exhausted, and drained from the extreme cold, by the time I got b
ack inside the car. The upper hallway was full of people. Stewards were ushering terrified and distraught passengers into other cars. Master personnel were gazing in perplexed dismay at the fight damage and the trio of Ves-sorine corpses. Eleena was arguing heatedly with one of the master crewmen.
Everyone looked round and someone screamed as I slithered back in through the window. I must have looked a sight: caked in frost and frozen blood from the wounds to my arm and chin.
Crezia and Aemos pushed through the onlookers and reached my side.
'I'm alright/
'Let me look at that... Golden Throne!' gasped Crezia, twisting my head to study the gash in my chin.
'Don't fuss.'
'You need-'
'Now's not the time. Is Medea all right?'
Yes,' said Aemos.
'So you're all unscathed?'
'You're wounded enough for all of us/ Crezia said.
'I've had worse/1 said.
'He has/ agreed Aemos. 'He's had worse/
Eleena was still shouting at the train master, who was shouting right back at her. He was a tall, distinguished man in an ornate, brocaded version of the Trans-Continental uniform topped with a Navy-style cap. Clearly very old, his eyes, nose and ears had been replaced with aug-metic implants: primitive, functional devices finished in boiler-metal black that probably had been handcrafted for him by the locomotive's devoted engineers. Even his teeth, framed by a spectacular white tile beard, were cast iron. His name was Alivander Suko, and I later discovered that he had been master of the Trans-Atenate Express for three hundred and seventy-eight years. He looked like a bearded locomotive in human form.
I pulled Eleena back and faced him.
'I demand an explanation/ Suko growled, his voice reverberating from a mechanical larynx, 'for this... outrage. Nothing like this has ever happened aboard the Trans-Atenate. This vulgar violence and impropriety-'
'Impropriety?' I echoed.
'Are you responsible for this?' he asked.
'I would not have chosen for this to occur, but... yes/
'Detain him now!' Suko yelled. A pair of burly train guards who had withdrawn laspistols from the express's emergency locker the moment the alarms had started sounding, stepped forward.